1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to information storage media, and, more particularly, to an information encoding method, an information decoding method, a recording/reproducing apparatus, and an information storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multi-layer information storage media having high density, which surpass an existing density and an existing number of layers in storage media that have been previously designed, are being developed. When such a multi-layer information storage medium that surpasses the previously existing density and number of layers is loaded on an apparatus typically used for a previously existing information storage medium, it is desirable to prevent the apparatus from recording and reproducing information on and from the newly developed multi-later information storage medium that surpasses the previously existing density and number of layers. This is because when a new information storage medium is developed, it usually inherits most contents of standards of existing information storage media, and thus, when a new multi-layer information storage medium having high density is loaded on an apparatus typically used for the previously existing existing information storage medium, the apparatus may reproduce or record information from or on the new multi-layer information storage medium in an erroneous fashion. In other words, since the apparatus is not completely aware of the new multi-layer information storage medium, the reproducing or recording of information may confuse a user, or data may be wrongly recorded on, or recorded data may be deleted from, the new multi-layer information storage medium.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a related art.
Referring to FIG. 1, a drive 1.0 110 is a recording/reproducing apparatus that follows a previously existing standard, and a drive 2.0 120 is a recording/reproducing apparatus that follows a new standard. A disk 2.0 100 manufactured to be used in the drive 2.0 120 has an encoding data format 2.0. As described above, recording/reproduction is normally performed on the disk 2.0 100 in the drive 2.0 120, but not in the drive 1.0 100.
Accordingly, information may be encrypted so as to avoid a risk that may occur when a new multi-layer information storage medium having high density is loaded on a conventional apparatus other than an apparatus designed to record or reproduce information on or from the new multi-layer information storage medium.